Biden will deliver his commencement address at Morehouse amid turmoil on US college campuses

ATLANTA (AP) — President Joe Biden will deliver the commencement address at Morehouse College on Sunday, a key election-year opportunity to talk before a black audience but could also directly expose him to the anger that a few of these and other students across the country have expressed its strong support for Israel in its war against Hamas militants in Gaza.

The White House suggested Biden would address concerns from students and college at the all-male, historically black college about his approach to the war. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said “stay tuned” when asked whether the Democratic president would address concerns which have sparked weeks of student protests on college campuses across the country.

The speech, a separate one which Biden will deliver later Sunday within the Midwest, is a component of a flurry of outreach to Black voters by the president, who has seen his support amongst those voters wane since their strong support helped put him within the Oval Office in 2020.

After speaking at Morehouse in Atlanta, Biden will travel to Detroit to talk at an NAACP dinner.

Georgia and Michigan are amongst a handful of states that will help resolve the expected November rematch between Biden and former Republican President Donald Trump. Biden narrowly won Georgia and Michigan in 2020 and must accomplish that again — because of strong Black voter turnout in each cities.

Jean-Pierre said Biden was looking forward to Morehouse’s speech, as he did to all of his inaugural addresses. She added that he wrote the remarks himself together with senior advisers.

“When it comes to this difficult moment that we are in, when we talk about protests, he understands that it involves a lot of pain,” Jean-Pierre said. “He understands that people have many opinions and he respects the fact that people have many opinions.”

Biden spent a part of Saturday warming up for a significant speech. At the Atlanta airport, he was greeted by a gaggle of former Morehouse graduates and playfully put their arm around one in every of them. He later stopped at Mary Mac’s Tea Room, a Black-owned restaurant that opened nearly 80 years ago, to briefly address about 50 supporters. It was presented by a 2024 Morehouse graduate.

The president joked that he was surrounded by “Morehouse Men.”

Biden spent late last week reaching out to black voters. He met with plaintiffs and relatives of those involved in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that banned racial segregation in public schools. He also met with members of the Black “Divine Nine” fraternities and sororities and spoke with members of the Little Rock Nine who helped integrate a public school in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.

Morehouse’s announcement that Biden will be the inaugural speaker has sparked a backlash amongst faculty and supporters who oppose Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas. Some Morehouse graduates circulated a letter online condemning school administrators for inviting Biden and collecting signatures so as to pressure Morehouse President David Thomas to revoke him.

The letter said Biden’s approach to Israel is tantamount to supporting the Gaza genocide and is inconsistent with the pacifism expressed by Martin Luther King Jr., Morehouse’s most famous alumnus.

Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7 killed 1,200 people. According to local health officials, greater than 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed within the Israeli offensive.

In a lengthy interview with the Associated Press, Thomas sought to downplay the prospect of student protests throughout the ceremony. He saw the all-male campus as a spot that, like other historically black colleges and universities, could balance social justice and political activism with a way of order and decency befitting a commencement and presidential address.

“I think you’ll find representatives of both sides on the spectrum – those who are adamantly opposed to the president coming to the speech, and those who, on the other hand, think it’s a great thing… and who see no contradiction between their feelings about what’s happening in Gaza and about the president’s arrival,” he said.

However, some students at Morehouse and the adjoining campuses that make up the Atlanta University Center (AUC) are staunchly against Biden’s appearance. They accuse Thomas and Morehouse trustees of prioritizing status and political alliances over the college’s values.

AUC students, faculty and alumni staged a rally and death row against Biden on Friday.

“If our brilliant HBCUs and administrators truly loved the activism they claimed to serve and used as a marketing tool, then… they would stand with us as we pray to God: ‘From the West End to the West Bank,’” the Morehouse junior said Lonnie White of Atlanta was amongst students who took part in two AUC demonstrations in recent weeks.

Student protest leaders said they didn’t know of plans for organized protests at the place to begin itself.

“I don’t even have a ticket,” said Anwar Karim, a Morehouse sophomore who spearheaded a petition calling on Thomas to withdraw Biden’s invitation.

Karim said he expected some students to attend nearby gatherings previously planned to have fun the birthday of Malcolm X, the black leader often credited with promoting the Black Power philosophy as a civil rights-era alternative to King’s practice of civil disobedience.

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Thomas said in an interview that quiet, non-disruptive protests can be tolerated, but reiterated that he promised to halt the ceremony if disruptions worsened.

Former U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, a Morehouse graduate and co-chair of Biden’s campaign who helped broker the president’s speech, called the graduation ceremony a “solemn event” and said the gravity of the moment should give potential protesters pause.

“I hope people won’t interrupt a once-in-a-lifetime moment like this for the students and parents and grandparents who are there to see these young men walk across that stage,” Richmond said.

In Detroit, Biden was scheduled to go to a small Black-owned business before delivering the keynote speech at a dinner hosted by the NAACP Freedom Fund, which traditionally draws hundreds of attendees. The speech gives Biden a probability to succeed in hundreds of individuals in Wayne County, an area that has voted overwhelmingly Democratic previously but has shown signs of resistance to his re-election bid.

Wayne County also has one in every of the most important Arab-American populations within the country, primarily in town of Dearborn. Leaders there spearheaded a “non-aligned” initiative that won greater than 100,000 votes within the state’s Democratic primary and spread across the country.

A protest rally and march against Biden’s visit is planned for Sunday afternoon in Dearborn. Another protest rally is predicted later that evening outside Huntington Place, the venue for the dinner.